


Titanium

by Hokuto



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Flashbacks, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 21:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9033377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: The moment before the blast holds a thousand more.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burning_Nightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! ♥

_There is an instant before the blast._

_An instant for an Iron Lord can hold an infinity:_

* * *

The pure clean joy of electricity shattering in jagged waves around her as she brought the Fist down on Rience's champion for the final time. Not that she'd known at once. She'd bounced up with sparks crackling around her fists, already charging up for another round, and only Efrideet's gleeful shout of "You did it! He's staying down!" had stopped her before she'd punched Melig's flinching Ghost into the atmosphere.

* * *

On the long hunt for Perun, a hunt that had become a game when Perun began to leave little caches for Jolder to find. Bits of knotted bark and string and pine needles in the shape of a Ghost, tiny shimmering bundles of spinmetal, bright black feathers tied to smooth little stones. Each teasing gift - and Jolder had kept them all during the trek, waste not, want not - had pointed to the next until at last they led to Perun, sitting next to a sparkling mountain spring that ran through sharp, jutting granite slabs.

"Took ya long enough," Perun said, and her smile shone brighter than the sunlight on the water.

* * *

It had been a whim, just something to make the journey to the fledgling City a little less hard, but the kid's _face_ when Jolder tossed her the spent casing after the Fallen had been driven back...

"I'm going to keep it _forever_ ," the little girl said, cradling the battered cylinder of bronze in her gloved hands as if it were glass-fragile.

"I believe it," said Jolder.

That girl had made it to the City.

* * *

Shadows of clouds flowing across the mountain's ridges, over keen edges and falls of deep blue ice and drops that would take a Ghost's breath away. _If I breathed_ , Orchid muttered in Jolder's ear.

"I'll give you this," she said to Felwinter, "you've got a hell of a view up here."

"Glad you approve," Felwinter said in his dry voice. "Most think it harsh."

"Ah, and so you think there's no beauty in that? The contrasts alone - between rock and snow, clouds and light, the edges of the mountains and the sky - well, I'm not the poet around here, I can't really describe it. But I think it's stunning."

Felwinter gave her a peculiar look then, but then, he seemed to give peculiar looks to most people. "You are one in a thousand," he said, "even among the Risen," but he would never say much more than that. Close-mouthed little jerk.

She'd loved him anyway.

She'd loved them all.

* * *

 _Saladin's face framed in the closing doors, desperate, screaming for her, and oh, if she wasn't holding that damn detonator she'd reach for him, let him grasp her hand one last time._ My dear, my dear, I'm so sorry _she doesn't say as the nanites crawl across her breastplate, it's too late for that, too late. He'll simply have to understand. It's for him she does this, for all the Iron Lords to come, for all the children who will treasure bullet-casings above rubies and for snow falling on the mountains and for clear water in sunlight and the City that must grow, grow, grow._

_She presses the button._

_Even the blast is beautiful._


End file.
